RDA P6 Publishing Data Breakout Session

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Dear Members of the RDA-WDS Publishing Data IG and WGs,
(apologies for multiple postings if any)
Thank you to those who attended the breakout session last Friday in Paris.
The meeting was a good opportunity to review some of the key challenges the
community is facing to make publishing data an integral part of the
scholarly record. The 3 Working Groups (Bibliometrics, Services and
Workflows) and the RDA-WDS IG on Cost Recovery demonstrated during P6 that
they are on target to deliver useful outputs by the next Plenary in Tokyo.
The discussion which followed a number of interesting presentations has
certainly helped sharpen the contours of future activities (thanks again to
the presenters and please send me a copy of your slides!). The
brainstorming session moderated by M. Diepenbroek during the last 50
minutes was organized around 4 issues listed below and participants were
invited to discuss these topics. I captured some of the main ideas and
actions below (please let me know if I missed anything important):
*Defragmentation:*
The 'not invented here' issue and the fact that several groups try to
'reinvent the same wheel' is recognized as a rampant problem in the area of
publishing data. The IG and the 3 WGs have spent considerable time trying
to liaise/coordinate/find synergies with other projects and activities in
their area of focus. However, no universal solution/approach seem to exist.
It was suggested that the IG finds inspiration in successful examples such
as in marine data harmonization.
*Endorsers/Facilitators:*
Recommendations and outputs from the WGs/IG will certainly be endorsed
and/or their adoption facilitated by the stakeholders committed to the IG
and WGs: WDS for the data centres and Data data service providers
community, STM Association for STM publishers, RDA and others. It was
suggested that the IG should/must focus in the future on encouraging other
stakeholders (OECD, NISO, etc.) involved or not in the IG/WG to play a role
in endorsing/facilitating adoption.
*Adoption:*
This topic is obviously overlapping with the endorsement/facilitation
questions above. In addition, the sustainability and maintenance of
services produced by the WGs, and in particular the data-publication
interlinking service is a non-trivial issue. Without sustainability, the
chances of adoption are severely reduced and developers will not risk
building added-value services on top. RDA is not equipped/intended to be
the final home for this type of operational services and the proposed
solution is that interested stakeholders, including communities of users,
should/would invest in the service to ensure its viability. Free of charge
is not a business model and the costs of running the services need to be
understood and met.
*Publishing Data IG reorganization:*
It was suggested and agreed that the IG should now focus on the adoption of
the WGs/IG deliverables during the next phase (pre- and post-RDA P7) and in
particular through outreach activities. However, it was also stressed that
the IG should retain a broad remit because many aspects of data publishing
have not been addressed or solved yet and the IG needs to continue its
convening and advocating functions.
Considering the last point about the foreseen focus on adoption, the IG
decided to expand the Co-chairmanship to experts from other
stakeholders/facilitators. As a reminder, the current Co-chairs represent
the "data centres and services" (M. Diepenbroek), the "STM publishers" (E.
Smit) and the "researchers" (J. Tedds).
*Expressions of interest from additional Co-chairs who can play a role in
facilitating adoption and endorsement of WGs/IG deliverable are thus
invited *(Please contact me ***@***.***-wds.org with copy to the
3 Co-chairs and RDA contact Herman Stehouwer ***@***.***).
With best regards.
Mustapha (on behalf of the Co-chairs)
--
*Mustapha Mokrane*, PhD. | Executive Director
World Data System-International Programme Office
c/o NICT, 4-2-1 Nukui-kitamachi, Koganei, Tokyo 184-8795, Japan
Tel: +81 4 2327 6004 Fax: +81 4 2327 6490 Mob:+81 90 5790 4732***@***.***-wds.org | www.icsu-wds.org